“We’re shopping for chonies,” Maggie told me as we entered a big box store in downtown San Francisco. She was looking for a specific cosmetic, headed straight to a shelf stocked with concealer and barely heard me when I tripped over that word in my brain and knocked over a cutout of Taylor Swift.

(Taylor is fine, maybe just a little dented. IMMA LET HER FINISH.)

Chonies? It took me a good four hours to remember that word in its proper form, and in the meantime I kept saying, “Chinos? Chalupas? CHORIZO! Got it!”

“CHONIES,” Maggie would say. “It’s slang for underwear, Armstrong.” Apparently in some parts of the world it’s good luck to buy new underwear to celebrate the new year. Because? Maybe you’ll get laid and this time it will be with someone you didn’t have to hire? Fingers crossed!

“Churros? Won’t that get… I don’t know… sticky?”

One of those overeager cosmetic helpers literally assaulted Maggie, tied her to a chair and began slathering her face with make-up, and through that woman’s fingers Maggie told Anna Beth and me to head upstairs to the lingerie section and start hunting. She trusted our taste. Find her something delicate and pink. I’d make a joke right about now, but this is a family-friendly website and no way am I going to shout NIPPLE!

So we took an elevator to the fifth floor, and when the doors opened an undulating sea of C-cups spilled up and over the landscape and filled every inch of the horizon. I turned to Anna Beth and said, “Have you ever seen so many Joanies and Chachis IN YOUR LIFE? That’s what they’re called, right?”

This lingerie section was bigger than most fly-over states. So big that the cups began to coalesce into a giant canvas and we could no longer distinguish one bra from the next. So we skirted the endless perimeter and drowned next to two mannequins wearing black fishnet stockings underneath waist-high polka dot panties. A pretty classy way to go out out if I do say so myself.

Classier than dying from an infection because you walked around with a churro on your butt.

Since we died we obviously didn’t buy any lucky chonies. The afterlife had best be full of prostitutes.

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